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My Experience with Microagressions

What are Microaggressions?

A microaggression is a comment or action that negatively targets a marginalized person or group. A microaggression can be intentional or accidental. It is a form of discrimination.

People who engage in microaggressions may mean no harm toward the person or group being targeted. They may not even realize that they are making a microaggressive comment or action. Regardless, microaggressions can be very hurtful to the people who experience them. Microaggressions may demean a person’s race, gender, sexual orientation, heritage, age, or health status, for example. Microaggressions convey disparaging messages to people because they belong — or are perceived to belong — to a specific group.

• Verbal: A verbal microaggression is a comment or question that is hurtful or stigmatizing to a marginalized group or person. For example, saying, “You’re so smart for a woman.”
• Behavioral: This involves behaving in a way that is discriminatory or otherwise hurtful to a marginalized person or group. For example, when a waiter or bartender ignores a transgender person and instead serves a cisgender person, someone whose biological sex matches their gender identity.
• Environmental: An environmental microaggression is when a subtle discrimination occurs within society, for example, when a college campus only has buildings named after white people

My Experiences of Microaggressions

Educational Settings

Middle School - Highschool Experience with Peers and Strangers

Microaggressions and racism can occur to everyone in their unique ways. Especially when people start attending school and being around other people who may be different from them, it can affect how they view others. Society and social media can also play a significant factor in how people view others. Stereotypes and pre-made perceptions can be made immediately without getting to know someone or a group of people that look similar. Thinking about the types of various Microaggressions, I've experienced a lot of behavioral Microaggressions. Comparably to the reading in Citizen, I've encountered many racial experiences with peers and unfriendly classmates that made me feel very uncomfortable and questioned myself at times. I've been told to randomly by white peers, "oh, I thought you were black," when having a conversation for the first time. I usually respond in humor, laugh off the situation, and reply," I'm Latina but hey, basically the same thing." Or I would receive the occasional say word-calling like "you look ghetto" or "why does your hair look so poofy" from my peers and me because of how we would dress and appear. Luckily, I had a group of great friends around me who looked similar to me and encouraged each other to be ourselves no matter what. That helped overcome the occasional microaggressions I experienced while maneuvering school.

Tips to prevent microaggressions

Lean in to empathy

Most of us want to be kind to others and show that we care, but that might seem harder to do when you don’t personally relate to what someone else is going through. This is where empathy comes in. You may not know exactly how the other person feels, but you can put yourself in their shoes to understand where they’re coming from.